


And it’s hard to fall in love

by masterchance05



Category: Fandom RPF
Genre: Falling In Love, Love at First Sight, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterchance05/pseuds/masterchance05
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Liam learns that it’s hard to fall in love with Niall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And it’s hard to fall in love

Harry tells him that Niall is sweet.

 

Liam does not argue with it. He’s stared enough at Niall’s blue eyes to know that it’s true. Niall is always smiling, his expression never changing. Liam sometimes wonders if it hurts to always smile like that.

 

He looks over at the other side of the room and catches Niall’s gaze. The blond is wearing his perpetual smile.  Liam winks at him and he swears that Niall’s eyes goes a little brighter. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Harry look at Niall too. There is a fondness there that Liam suddenly feels jealous of. He taps Harry’s arm and urges him to continue.

 

The lad looks at him for a moment, shakes the curls out of his eyes, and continues telling him about that time when Niall was caught opening his notes on an exam and never even getting detention for it because everyone  thought that his deer-caught-in-the-headlights look was the most adorable thing ever. 

 

He tells him about how all of their friends always seem to want to protect Niall as if he was the baby of the group – a thing that Harry sometimes felt jealous about, he admits, as he is the youngest out of their little clique. He suddenly has this look of humiliation written all over his face and Liam just smiles and pats him on the back as if to say  _it’s normal._

 

Harry smiles back and continues telling him more stories of when he and Niall were younger. Liam just holds Niall’s gaze through all this, satisfied with looking at the blue eyes through all the sweet stories and Liam thinks – he thinks that he must be falling in something deep.

 

\--

 

Louis tells him that Niall is fun.

 

He shows him a video of some prank he managed to pull on Harry last year and Niall is hysterical with laughter in it.  For some reason, Liam starts crying halfway through the video because Niall’s laugh is perfect. Liam pretends he doesn’t see the way Louis looks at him while he watches the video – the way the lad seems to be curious about something.

 

Louis shows him more videos of Niall: Niall attempting to roller blade, Niall jumping up and down a trampoline, and  _yes_ , Niall winning a pie-eating contest. This one, Louis says, is a personal favorite. Liam catches the look of pure adoration Louis throws Niall while saying this. 

 

Liam finds out that Niall has an insatiable appetite – and a bottomless stomach to match. Louis tells him that Niall’s favorite food is  _anything Nando’s_  and they laugh at all the stories Louis had to tell about Niall and his food binge adventures.

 

When it gets late enough to go home, Liam scrambles to go outside to make a phone call. When he comes back, he catches Louis as the lad goes up to the blond boy and quietly chuckles, “Oi! Chicken breath! I think this one likes you a lot. You let him down easy, yeah?”

 

Liam doesn’t talk to Louis on the way back home.

 

\--

 

Zayn tells him that Niall is a dreamer.

 

He tells Liam about Niall’s dreams of becoming a famous musician and shows him a video of the boy singing and playing the guitar.

 

Liam thinks it’s perfect. Niall has a perfect voice. It was clear and on-pitch and  _adorable_  and Liam doesn’t have words enough to describe it.

 

They stay like that for a while, just listening to Niall sing. Liam thinks he can stay there forever. He can fall asleep like that while Niall sang him lullabies.

 

“You like him.”

 

Liam looks up at the boy in front of him. He is wearing an all-knowing look and Liam suddenly feels small under his gaze. Zayn chuckles as he pulls out a cigarette, thinks better of it, and chucks the whole packet out the window.

 

Liam sees him look over at Niall across the room. “He doesn’t like me smoking,” he explains.

 

Liam nods as Zayn shifts his body to get a more comfortable position on his place by the window.

 

They sit silently for a while just listening to Niall’s voice as he sang in one of the videos.

 

“Did you know that his ultimate dream was to fall in love?” Zayn says randomly as Niall starts to sing the chorus to Lifehouse’s _Everything_ on the video currently playing.

 

Liam’s heart skips a beat. He looks over to Niall across the room and suddenly, he feels heavier. He blushes, looks away, only to be met by Zayn’s piercing gaze.

 

The other boy shakes his head and smiles. Liam flushes again.

 

“You love him.”

 

It wasn’t a question. Zayn’s voice is so full of certainty that Liam is sure the lad is more than willing to place a bet on this.

 

Liam doesn’t answer. He just stares off into the empty space above Zayn’s head. The other lad stands up, pats Liam’s shoulder and leaves to retrieve his cigarettes.

 

“Don’t stress yourself out too much.” He hears him say before he steps out.

 

\--

 

They are alone this time. None of Niall’s friends are here to tell stories. He enters the room silently, strides purposefully in front of the boy, and offers him a white lily.

 

“I love you…” he whispers, his eyes focused on the pure white flower in his hand. Niall hasn’t reached out for it.

 

It feels like rejection.

 

Liam thinks that it’s because he said the words too quietly – too practiced to even mean anything _._  He looks up and Niall’s blue eyes meet his. He’s smiling – always smiling – and Liam wonders if he even heard it.

 

He touches Niall’s face, brings it onto his chest, and tries one more time.

 

“I love you…”

 

The words are clearer this time. It feels more real.

 

But Niall’s photograph feels stiff tucked under his arms and pressed onto his chest.

 

It doesn’t respond.

 

Liam breaks down and sobs.

 

\--

His mom tells him that it’s normal – falling in love with someone you haven’t even met.

 

Liam thinks it would be a different story when she finds out the truth. Nobody falls in love with a photograph – and most especially, a dead person’s photograph.

 

Liam can’t tell her though. He doesn’t know how to explain how he had been searching for some peace and quiet five months ago and how he had found it when he decided to go jogging through a cemetery. He doesn’t know how to explain how he has been stopping by at a stranger’s mausoleum for the past five months to look at the photograph of the person lying there – a blond 19 year-old kid with the sweetest smile Liam has ever seen.

 

And Liam certainly cannot explain how he has been spending all this time talking to the boy’s friends who happen to be visiting the grave. Or that he has fallen in love with said boy who has been dead for six months now.

 

He sniggers to himself remembering Harry, Louis, and Zayn and their look of utter astonishment when they found him sitting on one of the benches inside Niall’s mausoleum. They’d wondered who he was at first but immediately warmed up to him after he told them that he was an acquaintance. He’d then asked them for stories about Niall and the boys had all happily obliged.

 

Ever since then, for five months, they’d come meet Liam at Niall’s  _maus_  when their schedules permitted. Sometimes they’d come as a group, other times alone. They would talk about Niall for hours, filling Liam in on whatever it is he could have missed out on when Niall was alive.

 

Liam is pretty sure Niall was –  _is_  his soul mate. And that fate was having a right good fun with him at the moment. Because what good is it finding your soul mate if he was already buried in the ground a month before you found him?

 

_Why can’t he have met the lad before the accident?_

 

He cries into a pillow that night as he looks at Niall’s pictures through his phone - the ones that Harry had sent him. There was a picture there that Liam found to be absolutely breath taking. It was a candid shot of Niall looking up at the sun and pointing at something upwards. His face was arranged into a gentle smile, and his eyes were wide and full of wonder.

 

He sets it as his phone’s wallpaper.

 

He flips through some of the videos next – the one Zayn and Louis had sent him. He smiles to himself as he puts the phone down and lets Niall’s voice fill the room.

 

Maybe it isn’t too bad. Maybe he isn’t prepared for Niall yet. Niall was too perfect, too pure, too innocent, and Liam thinks he isn’t ready for him yet.

                                                                                                                                                              

 _‘Maybe in another lifetime,’ h_ e thinks.

 

And as he begins to fall asleep, he dreams of a certain blond whispering, “ _I love you too,” and_  “ _I’ll see you in the next one.”_

 

Liam smiles and falls into a deep slumber. 

**Author's Note:**

> So... that was a little sad. But feel free to comment on what I should have done here. I feel like there are some elements I might have missed and some questions that were left unanswered. I would love to know what you think.


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